The Lovelock Name and Related Variants

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO THE NAME LOVELOCKCourtesy of the late Janet Hearle (nee Loveluck)

Long ago, when the population was small, people were only known by
one name and in Christian countries this name was given to the new
born child at his or her baptism: the "christian" name. Later,
when the population had increased, a single name was not enough to
identify people, so other names were added. If this was not
possible, for example, as in towns, men added their occupation as a
second name, and, in some cases, particular men were known by a
striking personal characteristic, which was added to their original
name.

The name Lovelock is an old one, probably given to members of the
family because many of them had hair which fell into a curly lock on
the foreheads, and this remains as a characteristic of many of this
family today.

The spelling of the family name was varied in olden days because few
people could read or write, so they were dependent on their local
keeping of records for this. Another factor was the influence
of accents on spelling as the scribes had to guess at relevant
sounds with no help from the applicant. The earliest known record of
any recognisable variant of the family name is in the "Hundred
Rolls" of 1279 where a William Lovelake is mentioned. In 1464
in Sir John Seymour's "Administration of the Forest" of Savernake,
one of his foresters was named as "William Loveleke of
Hyppingscombe". By the 17th Century the spelling of the name had
generally settled down to Lovelock.

Today there seem to be two distinct but related family names. The
main body spells the name Lovelock. However, one man migrated
from Wiltshire to Margam in South Wales. In the 18th Century when
people in that locality mainly spoke Welsh, they pronounced the "o"
as "u", so this name was pronounced Loveluck and spelt the same.
Hence one branch of the original family living in South Wales
adhered to the name Loveluck and as time went on, many emigrated. So
there is a small number of people of this name to be found in
various countries around the world, in addition to the many people
of the original Lovelock family. Added to this there have been
numerous mistakes in spelling made in historical family documents
through the years, so that this sometimes causes difficulties for
researchers in family history.